Research has demonstrated that providing labels helps children notice key features of examples. Much less is known about how different labels impact children's ability to make inferences about the structure underlying mathematical notation. We tested the impact of labeling decimals such as 0.34 using formal place-value labels ("3 tenths and 4…

The ability to use numerical evidence to revise beliefs about the physical world is an essential component of scientific reasoning that begins to develop in middle childhood. In 2 studies, we explored how data variability and consistency with participants' initial beliefs about causal factors associated with pendulums affected their ability to…

Although metacognition is considered a central aspect of self-regulated learning and is often linked to learning outcomes, little is known about the intraindividual development and factors that lead to developmental improvement over time. This longitudinal study investigated 2nd graders' (N = 119, aged 8-9 years) metacognitive monitoring and…

Two experiments examined whether concrete models support place value learning. In Experiment 1 (N = 149), 7-year-olds were trained with either a) symbols alone or b) symbols and base-10 blocks. Children in both groups showed significant growth overall, but there were specific effects favoring one training type over another. Symbols-only training…

The present study examined whether and how socioeconomic status (SES) predicts school achievement in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) using structural equation modeling and data from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development Study of Child Care and Youth Development. The present inquiry addresses gaps in…

In mathematically literate societies, numerical information is represented in 3 distinct codes: a verbal code (i.e., number words); a digital, symbolic code (e.g., Arabic numerals); and an analogical code (i.e., quantities; Dehaene, 1992). To communicate effectively using these numerical codes, our understanding of number must involve an…

Data from a large-scale, longitudinal research study with an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample were utilized to explore linkages between maternal elaborative conversational style and the development of children's autobiographical and deliberate memory. Assessments were made when the children were aged 3, 5, and 6 years old, and the…

A curious phenomenon in early social-cognitive development has been identified: Preschoolers deny that they can see others who cannot also see them (Russell, Gee, & Bullard, 2012). The exclusive focus on vision has suggested that this effect is limited to gaze, but children's negations might reflect a broader phenomenon that extends to vocal…

Research has explored how multiracial individuals are categorized by monoracial individuals, but it has not yet explored how they are categorized by multiracial individuals themselves. We examined how multiracial children (aged 4-9 years old) and adults categorized multiracial targets (presented with and without parentage information). When…

Humans are motivated to connect with others and are sensitive to social exclusion--intentionally leaving out others. This ability to detect social exclusion is suggested to be evolutionarily adaptive, biologically hardwired, and an important feature of social-cognitive development. Yet it is unclear when children start to independently detect…

Young children can engage in diagnostic reasoning. However, almost all research demonstrating such capacities has investigated children's inferences when the individual efficacy of each candidate cause is known. Here we show that there is development between ages five and seven in children's ability to reason about the number of candidate causes…

This study examined the play of 4-year-old children with a forest diorama that included toy representations of plants and animals. To examine the potential role of culture and expertise in diorama play, children from 3 samples participated: rural Native American, urban Native American, and urban non-Native American. Children's playtime was divided…

This study investigated the roles of different executive function (EF) components (inhibition, shifting, and working memory) in 2-step arithmetic word problem solving. A sample of 139 children aged 8 years old and regularly attending the 3rd grade of primary school were tested on 6 EF tasks measuring different EF components, a reading task and a…

This study examined the extent to which school-aged children's general narrative skills provide cognitive benefits for accurate remembering or enable good storytelling that undermines memory accuracy. European American and Chinese American 6-year-old boys and girls (N = 114) experienced a staged event in the laboratory and were asked to tell a…

This study investigated longitudinal pathways leading from early spatial skills in first-grade girls to their fifth-grade analytical math reasoning abilities (N = 138). First-grade assessments included spatial skills, verbal skills, addition/subtraction skills, and frequency of choice of a decomposition or retrieval strategy on the…